It is January 1719 and a man sits at a table, writing, at the opening of this remarkable hybrid biography of two authors and their respective links to an enduring fictional character. Nearly 60, Daniel Defoe is troubled with gout, burdened with a large family and debts, and mired in political controversy and legal threats, yet he is preoccupied with the image of a younger man on a barren shore—Robinson Crusoe. Several miles south of Defoe sits another man, Robert Knox, bent over the only book he has written, published nearly 40 years before: an account of his captivity on the island of Ceylon—the inspiration for Defoe's hero.

"This is a beautifully constructed book and, ultimately, a moving one. But it is also more than fine literary sleuthwork: it finds profound echoes between its three protagonists' lives, echoes that make their characters seem all the more three-dimensional, and full of pathos."—Sunday Times (London)